President Trump

There was much hand-wringing over Donald Trump and the fate of oratory during the 2016 campaign, leading to the ever-present and ever-painful game “which ancient person does modern politician X best resemble?” There were a lot of Roman names being tossed about, but the debate usually wandered its way over into the Athenian Assembly. This makes sense. The Assembly was the stage for some of the greatest speech writers of all time and Athens a place where the study of rhetoric began. The orators who took that floor, men like Demosthenes, Aeschines and Hyperides, have been canonized for their skill, and we have only second-hand reports about the speeches of their predecessors such as Pericles and Alcibiades who dominated the Athenian body politic for decades, for better and for worse.

Modern commentators tend not to put Trump on such a pedestal, instead often making the comparison with Cleon, the up-jumped son of a leather tanner who Thucydides calls the bloodiest man in Athens. Cleon is mocked by Thucydides and others, including the comic poet Aristophanes, for his vulgarity, his brutality, and his authoritarian leanings. Cleon:Trump starts to sound like an apt parallel, but I hasten to add that it comes with several caveats: a) we know about Cleon almost exclusively from hostile sources; b) the built in assumption for the comparison is that Cleon was dramatically inferior to Pericles; and c) even for the orators whose speeches survive we don’t know what was said in the Assembly, how it was presented, or what people said in response.

Taken into the modern world, labelling Trump Cleon was part and parcel with lamenting the deplorable state of modern oratory, particularly during the last presidential election cycle. Like many, I was appalled by much of what was said and none of the speeches is going to go down as an example for the ages, let alone coin a term the way that Demosthenes’ Philippics (speeches against Philip) did. And yet, oratory, in the words of Sam Seaborn, should raise your heart rate, oratory should knock the doors off the place. By all accounts, Trump did this whatever you think of the actual message. The election demonstrated some of the worst features of demagoguery, and there were plenty of opinion pieces that dealt with that topic and other legacies of classical antiquity.

Along with perpetual side-eye and exclamations of disbelief (he said WHAT??) and the the explosive growth of fact-checking services, one of the developments in the past year or so has been a cottage industry dedicated to combing through speeches and social media to find a person saying the exact opposite of whatever it is they just said. Trump was obviously the main target of this practice, but it has also extended to other politicians and his political appointees, including, most recently, Anthony Scaramucci’s tweets. In turn, this has led some to scrub their social media profiles to eliminate contradictory, embarrassing, or politically disadvantageous comments, which brings me back to Ancient Greece.

The public speeches are one part of the presentation for Donald Trump (or anyone else), the social media persona is a second. Leaving aside that people are allowed to change their mind, it is absolutely reasonable to plumb both categories and hold politicians to account for inconsistencies and other problematic statements. At the same time, when reading the speeches of the Attic orators, the lack of internal consistency from speech to speech is striking. These are historical records in the modern sense, but rather works of persuasion that provide some insight into their contemporary times. One might still be tempted to denounce the speaker, berating him with a series of facts, and that may well have happened, but the speeches also serve as a microcosm of a broader ancient Greek relationship with truth, past of present.

This was particularly true in terms of foreign policy in ancient Greece. Launching a rhetorical assault on another city, praising the same city as a reliable ally, and inventing a mythological genealogy that links the two are not mutually exclusive depending on what context is needed for a given speech. The sheer amount of data that exists in the modern world dwarfs that of the ancient, making these blurred lines much clearer and allowing one to trace the lineage of a given statement, but the relationship to facts bears remarkable similarity.

I am hardly alone when I say that recent politics has been a major drag on my mental and emotional energy. I don’t know what is going to happen in the near future, but the current direction scares me in more ways than I care to mention. Still, I find myself thinking a lot about politics and doing my best to stay informed because, as difficult as it might be, that remains a civic duty. I also remain problematically addicted to checking my Twitter feed, albeit recently in shorter and less-comprehensive bursts.

These moments of checking Twitter have led me to a realization about the current superficial maelstrom, as epitomized and led by the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That realization is this:

There is nothing that President Trump could post to his Twitter account that would change my opinion of him.

Sure, there are things that he could post that would change the trajectory of the country and do good in the world, but that would mean one of three things: 1) the account was hacked; 2) someone else was managing the account; or 3) that President Trump decided to make an about-face in order to be more popular. None of those three options would change my opinion of him, while what he does post simply digs deeper. I still see people retweeting (usually with sarcastic comment) what he says or dredging up past posts looking for inconsistency. Neither genre of tweet does much for me and in many cases both distract from the substance of issues—not to mention that feeding the ego of someone who fundamentally wants to be the center of attention, whose interests run toward habitual misinformation and complaining about media coverage.

I could never bring myself to follow Trump’s twitter account, but, for months, I would regularly check in, caught up in whatever the latest utterance was. No longer. The campaign is over and I don’t need to actually see the latest bout of internet logorrhea in order to know what he said, at least in reasonable facsimile. I can’t live isolated from the news, but that doesn’t mean that I have to partake in online farce.

I spent a good portion of today writing a letter to Senator Roy Blunt (R, Missouri), because my conscience will not let me stay quiet. I wanted to make a case why the immigration ban in particular and other recent executive actions concerning national security more broadly ought to be met with bipartisan opposition. Since this is not merely a sticking point between liberal and conservative ideologies, I offered a short list of reasons why all elected officials ought to add the voice to curtailing many of the recent actions by the Trump administration.

I have my doubts about the efficacy of writing this, but, nevertheless I am going to compose a similar letter for my representative in the near future and am already planning letters on other issues. It may be shouting into the darkness, to be read only by a low-ranking staffer or intern, but so it goes. If it moves the needle at all, it will be worthwhile.

The transcript of the letter I penned is copied below. If anyone wishes to copy any portion of this to use in a letter to their own representative, you have my full permission.

January 29, 2017

Dear Senator Blunt,

I am a constituent in Columbia, Missouri (65202), and I am writing you today to express my concern over actions taken by President Trump’s administration on the issue of national security.

President Trump has moved aggressively and unilaterally. The highest profile action is the recent executive order that placed a temporary ban on people born in or holding the citizenship of seven Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and Africa traveling into the United States, regardless of any other circumstance, legal status, or prior permission. The administration has insisted that this is the first step in enacting what the President touted as “extreme vetting” and will lead to even more sweeping measures to combat “radical Islam,” which, they say, will ensure the safety and security of the United States. Although the executive order does not explicitly restrict travel based on religion, it has been widely characterized as a Muslim ban, including by Mayor Giuliani, one of the architects of its language.

As of the composition of this letter the majority of the criticism of the ban by public officials has been by Democrats and Independents. President Trump’s rhetoric about national security does not make the United States safer and his early actions as president threaten both the wellbeing and the liberties of Americans at home and abroad. Opposition to President Trump’s unilateral action cannot be a partisan issue.

Allow me to provide a short list of reasons why I believe you should oppose both the travel restrictions and other actions on national security taken or proposed by President Trump.

Federal judges have ordered stays on the most extreme parts of the executive order, but there are multiple accounts of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection officers who have refused to follow these rulings. They are insisting that their only orders can come from President Trump. This is not happening universally, but already these are indications that the actions taken by President Trump pose a grave threat to American institutions and the sanctity of the American judicial tradition. I believe that this executive order is a violation of the Bill of Rights, but what worries me more is setting the precedent that when the courts decide an action is illegal, those rulings can be ignored.

The people who have been detained in US airports have already undergone years of background and medical checks. In many of these cases, these people risked their own lives and the lives of their families to help the US military, particularly in Iraq. Their willingness to help the United States continues to put their lives in danger in Iraq and, even if they had been living another country before being granted permission to enter the United States, they are at risk of being deported back to their country of origin.

This executive order is built on the premise that the gravest threat to national security is “radical Islamic terrorism.” Since the attacks on 9/11/2001 there have been passing few attacks against US citizens by radicalized Muslims and, including the 9/11 attacks, there have been zero attacks by any citizens of any of the countries on the current ban. ISIL and other radical Islamic groups such as Boko Haram are a serious threat to global security, but this executive order only superficially targets radical Islam. In reality, President Trump’s order has validated the worst characterization of America and Americans, immeasurably undermining our national reputation abroad and encouraging—not discouraging—further radicalization.

On the same issue: in an attempt to circumvent discriminating against immigrants based on their religion, this executive order is a blanket ban. It does not target Muslims or radical Muslims, but bans people who have been persecuted by the Islamic State, including Christians and the Yazidis, non-Muslims whose sons have been murdered and whose daughters have been given as sex-slaves to the men of the Islamic State. Along with most Muslims, these are all implacable enemies of radical Islam. This executive action leaves them vulnerable to ISIL predations and weakens the forces that oppose radical Islam in the Middle East and around the world.

President Trump maintained during the campaign that the United States should not be committed to NATO. There has been no public action yet, but, much like the immigration ban, such blunt and abrupt action threatens US national security. Our allies in Europe, as well as Turkey, are shouldering as much or more of the threat from radical Islam than is the United States.

Lastly, the executive order on immigration is indicative of a larger issue with the Trump administration that threatens American institutions. I am deeply concerned by the rapid rise of Steve Bannon, whose track record in public filings and at Breitbart reveals him to be a radical whose interests are not aligned with those of the United States. Particularly troubling is the recent news that he has displaced the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence on the National Security Council. It worries me that there is little vocal criticism of the radicalization of the Trump administration, of the continued conflicts of interest that cloak many of President Trump’s appointees, and of the lack of experience held by appointees to many critical positions.

I repeat: these are not partisan issues. The function of American government is predicated on a sharing of powers, with each branch of government serving as a check on the others. To stand passively by while the President of the United States threatens national security and runs roughshod over the protections enshrined in the Constitution is a serious abnegation of the responsibilities entrusted to all elected officials.

About

Welcome to my blog. Although the host is new, the blog is not--the first post went up in January 2008.
I write about a variety of topics here including, but hardly limited to, baking, books, movies, historical topics, and politics. This is a catchall where I write about whatever I want to write about.